The Organism and the Causal Texture of the Environment

Each of us has come to envisage psychology as primarily concerned with the methods of response of the organism to two characteristic features of the environment. The first of these features lies in the fact that the environment is a causal texture {Kausalgefuge) 2 in which different events are regularly dependent upon each other. And because of the presence of such causal couplings (Kausalkoppelungen), actually existing in their environments, organisms come to accept one event as a local representative (Stellvertreter) for another event. It is by the use of such acceptances or assertions of local representatives that organisms come to steer their ways through that complex network of events, stimuli and happenings, which surrounds them. By means of such local representation (Stellvertretung) the organism comes to operate in the presence of the local representative in a manner more or less appropriate to the 1 This article was written during a relatively long 6tay of the one author, Tolman, in Vienna. A somewhat different version under the title "Das Lebetvesen im Kausalgefuge seiner Umgebung" will, it is hoped, appear later in German. The authors have sought throughout to bring their two sets of terminologies into correspondence. The parallel German terms are presented here in parentheses. * For the term "texture" as well as for advice on various other English terms we wish to express special indebtedness to Professor S. C. Pepper. (See also 29.)